uttering surmises, perchance, of whom the traveller may be whom they see wending down the slope in face of them. And still lower, houses, and high house-roofs, and trees, and strong massive masonry are so mixed up together that you can separate nothing. It will soon be dusk, or you would stop and gaze your fill. The picture so delights you that you do not take your eye off it till the road winds along close beside the foot of the mound, and all above is then shut out from sight. How those stones tell of age, -of other centuries,-mossy and time-worn, and with strong shrubs growing out of the interstices? On the top of the old wall are dwellings joined in, and mixed up with it in some strange confused way or other, though do not comprehend how. Above, from small lattices, you heads are looking out; and you go at a foot pace over the rough pavement, and the street is narrow and dark, from the high gables; and all looks very like the time when Hans Sachs sang so merrily while he made his shoes and rhymes. "Are you sure,” you ask yourself, "that this really is the nineteenth and not the sixteenth century?" or are you in a dream? though everything, especially the tremendous jolting of the waggon, as if it would come to pieces, seems very real. And still in a sort of doubt you go onward to the hostel, prepared to meet all that may present itself, however antiquated, without surprise.

Presently the street opens on the market-place, broad and sufficiently spacious, but sloping somewhat; for the hill on which the upper town is built descends here abruptly into the very middle of the town. Indeed a part of Schässburg stands on this slope, one house uprising behind the other; and a steep street leads to the quarter above.

How you stare in wonderment at all you see there! at the architecture of the fine gateway with its massive and

most picturesque tower,* the narrow streets, and the curious out-of-the-way places that you chance upon as you rove about. It is like Nuremberg and Ulm, with something of the quaint little towns with walls still round them, to

you

be found on the borders of the Rhine. Look where may, some object is seen indicative of the troublous past. Everything is strong and for defence, and for guarding against surprise. Before reaching the gate of the Burgh is

*The eaves-course of the tower of the new church, St. James the Less, Garden Street, Westminster, greatly resembles that of the tower in the Burgh of Schässburg.

a strong, small oaken door, leading you know not whither, though you would like to know it; then a covered way; further on are steps for reaching a higher part, and here you pass through a low arch and emerge on a sort of platform overlooking the town; and what a conglomeration of buildings just within the citadel! There is the narrowest possible space between them, so that the passage can hardly be called a street. The houses just in this "Thurm Strasse," are small, but built with great strength; their interior is vaulted, and the narrow winding staircase of massy stone. This was probably a dangerous part, and being close to the gate, here the most desperate attacks were made. Each house was a little fortress, and gloomy and dismal were the vaulted passages, for little was the light that entered by the ironbarred windows in those thick walls. Further onward, all wore a pleasanter look. There was a square with neat houses, and pretty green jalousies, and old-fashioned decorations, and old-fashioned neatness. A quiet and certain well-to-do air was about the place. I fancied it could not have looked very different three hundred years ago. Here, away from the walls and the besiegers, the inhabitants seemed to have breathed more freely. They gave themselves more room; houses were not so cramped; nor were the walls nor the interiors of such ponderous strength. Beyond this was a covered archway or tunnel that led to a spot halfway up the hillside, where the gateway and ruined bastion stood which I had seen from a distance on first approaching the place. The wall of circumvallation had been flanked at intervals with towers and nothing could be more picturesque than these, standing on all sides on the steep declivity, while the old wall went now up the most precipitous places and now down among trees, following every bend in the uneven ground.

At the very summit stand the church and the Gymnasium, to which a long, straight, covered flight of steps leads. One never was tired of groping about the passages and streets, and prying into the courts behind the houses, making at every step some new discovery, and finding cause for wonderment.

Before the evening closed in, I went up to the belfry of the church. I looked down on the high, steeply-sloping, tiled roof of a square tower that rose from the fortress wall. Its shape and build told of the middle ages. There was the churchyard, and, bordering it in pell-mell confusion, straggling up the hill, houses of dwellers in the Burgh. Away to the east lay a fertile plain. Round the town were slopes covered with beeches, and to the

west was a wooded declivity; while between this and the mound of the citadel ran a ridge, dividing the one dale in which the town lay from a new valley on the other side. I could look over into it. On the top of the ridge was a churchyard, with poplars and willows. There was foliage everywhere, and yonder, winding through it, ran the river.

The windows on the four sides of the belfry formed the frame to my pictures, each different and rivalling the others in beauty. For a long time I had not seen so lovely a landscape, so original too in character, with the sturdy gateways, and towers, and postern, and medieval dwellings mixed up with it, and now all softened and blended harmoniously by the melancholy gleaming of a setting sun. I never think of this place but as "Schässburg the Picturesque."

When, after the disastrous battle of Mohatsch, the Emperor Ferdinand was fighting with Zápoyla for his crown, the latter having suffered defeat, took refuge in Transylvania. "A great part of the nobles was on his side. The real strength of the country however lay in the Saxons it was they who had the fortified towns; they had arms and money. The question was, whose part would they take?"* Zápoyla now summoned them to assemble and meet him on the Sunday after Reminiscence, 1527, with bows and arrows, accoutrements for 1000 horsemen, and the tithes which his Diet had levied. they refused to stir. Zápoyla's rage was great. But notwithstanding they remained unshaken in their fealty to the Emperor. The whole of the Burzenland, Hermannstadt, and all that was Saxon ground, with the exception of Klausenburg, acknowledged him. So the Vaiwode, Stephen Bathori, laid siege to Schüssburg. The

* Teutsch, 'Geschichte der Sachsen,' p. 240.

But