LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

A HOLIDAY IN THE TIROL. ILL—To THE OETZTHAL.

[To THE EDITOR OF "THE SPECTATOR:"] Berne, August 19, 1870. Sin,—You can hardly conceive the strangeness of the feeling with which we in Switzerland watch the great collapse taking place in France, almost every day bringing us notice of some new crash and some new ruin in the empire which so lately looked as solid as it was imposing. The late French Premier, M. 011ivier, we hear, has passed near us, carrying his "light heart" to Culoz, after giving the Count de Palikao that energetic -support which he promised him in the Chamber, for a good quarter of an hour ! Whether France is still an empire, or is a republic, or something between the two, we hardly know. As for us 'neutrals' here, we look at the boiling ocean of war and revolution between us and home with a strange awe and pain. It is not, even with the women among us, fear for ourselves,—for the calm of exhaustion must come soon, in which we English may safely cross it. But we can't help a little sharing the Swiss feeling, which has been from the beginning a sort of instinctive dread of a new and fearful stride in Prussian power. Henry says it is because the Swiss remember the Prussian threats -against Neuchatel, and shudder to see a power all but omnipotent in Europe which has once, at least, and quite recently, coveted a dads bit of their poor vineyard. But I think it is as much that the Swiss, who have a keen feeling for the difference between -appearance and reality, have always felt that the French Empire had something about it of the "unsubstantial pageant" that might fade and "leave not a rack behind," while they have always entertained a very wholesome dread of the unbroken continuity and unpleasant thoroughness of the Prussian State. The canny Swiss, shopkeepers and all, stick to it that they are neutral, that they have no bias or preference at all, and now that the War has deft their frontiers, and their army is no longer needed there, they -express great relief ; yet for all that they look graver and graver, and very much as if they had been pondering on the texts, -4' Destruction cometh ; it cometh from the North ;" "from the North cometh a smoke, and there is no straggler in their hosts." I am really ashamed to take up your columns with my gossiping

• journal, when they are full of so much weightier matter ; but after all, we do want a rest sometimes from despatches about bloody battles, the screams of agitated assemblies, rumours of territorial -annexation, and fears of universal empire. Nature is more than -ever a rest in times like these.

We left the Bavarian Tyrol for the Austrian with some regret. It is surely curious that in the same mountainous regions there .should be three peoples so curiously distinct in character as the handsome, frank, and gay Bavarians; the sombre, not to say gloomy, but ardent Tyrolese of the Austrian Tyrol; and the kindly, but very -canny, and somewhat phlegmatic Swiss. Within two or three miles as you cross the border, between the Bavarian and Austrian 'Tyrol, the cast of face changes in the most marked way. I told :you of the charitable but grave and stolid youth who drove us to Ammergau. Well, he was an Austrian Tyrolese of the Vorarlberg. In Ober-Ammergau, the whole people seemed light-hearted, and smiling, and most of them gentle. We were charmed, for in- stance, with a little lad (nothing remarkable in himself, but we had the opportunity of making his acquaintance), in the great wood-carving school of Ober-Ammergau, who carved -us a very pretty little crucifix, and guided us to the top -of the Kofel—a high rock about 1,000 feet above the village, which it overhangs ;—perhaps I should say rather, guided Henry ,to the top and me to a platform a little below it, where I sat in the rain bewailing my husband's rashness, as he tumbled up in his .awkward, shortsighted way past places where I felt sure he would -break his neck, in spite of my strongest entreaties to stay with me. To be sure, two welr-to-do-looking Bavarian women, who had -availed themselves of our little guide, were so little alarmed that they went on with Henry and very nearly reached the top too, 'though they gave up, I believe, about a minute before they would have reached the summit ; but they said it was very steep and diffi- cult, and complimented me on my good sense in staying behind ; indeed, the good women had to sprawl on a rock and pull themselves -over it, by the help of Henry's stick, which he benignantly held out to them. After all, too, Henry saw nothing in the mist, and he -ought not to have left me in that dreary place, looking at a wet precipice for twenty minutes in anxious solitude. However, what I was going to say was that this little wood-carving boy, was such a little gentleman. He picked me all the wild-strawberries he could find,—nothing in the world is so good as Alpine strawberries, —and had such a sweet voice and cheerful face, that I took a strong fancy to him. He told us he was in one of the groups of "the people of Israel" on the Ammergau stage, of which he appeared very proud. For his station in life, his face, like a great many in the Bavarian Tyrol, was wonderfully refined. I can't say, however, how far this refinement really goes ;—not nearly so far, I fancy, as the kindliness and cheerfulness. Our driver from Ammergau to the Inn-thal was a very shining-faced inn- keeper who played on the zither, but I am bound to say he was not at all refined. He had once played on the zither before the King of Bavaria, who was said to have been pleased, and in that case must have been very easily contented, for though the good man gave us some idea of what the instrument might be in an artist's hands, be, as he confessed,—though with a smile of harmless vanity, as if he thought we should be of quite another mind,—was "no artist ;" but, in fact, we quite agreed with him. He was altogether a very amusing character. I never saw a man who took a livelier pleasure (just a little greasy, however), in himself and all that belonged to him. As we drove out of Ammergau he nudged Henry, and pointing to an inn, said with much importance, "Mein Gasthof " (" My inn"). Then, as we were descending (on foot) the steep hill into Ettal, he stopped in the middle at one of the little pictured memorials at the side of the road, of which there are so many in the Tyrol, and made signs of great energy to us to come back to look at it. When we did so, he said in a most unctuous voice, pointing at the figure of a man with a whip in his hand, who was delineated walking up the hill beside a two-horse carriage,—" Das war ich," "That's meant for me ;" and then went on to report that the lifeless old gentleman depicted as stretched by the way-side was a " fare " of his, who had been struck with apoplexy while walking up the hill to save his horses. When we got to Garnisch he said, with quite an air of an historical reminiscence, "My birth-place." But the most curious trait of all, was his driving us round at least three good miles out of our way on one of these fearfully sultry days when the sun's "going-forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it," and "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof," appar- ently only to tell us, with a sepulchral smile, as he pointed to a pub- lic-house in a little village entirely out of our road, "There—my mother was born." He was very anxious we should go to an inn at Lermos kept by "relations of mine," but this Henry declined, at which he appeared grieved, but not angry. The next day he told us with mild reproachfulness that we had missed a zither entertainment of his in the evening, given to the guests in the public room of our inn, by our unsocial habit of keeping to our own room, adding, by way of general reproach to those who had enjoyed the privilege we had missed, that though he played to ten gentlemen, he got no fee for the performance. A cheerfuller creature, with all his greasy vanity, I never saw. He got Henry to apply the drag for him, in going down hill, which was done by a pressure of the foot ; and the grand air with which he would wave his hand and say, "Enough!" when the pressure was to be relaxed, was quite imperial.

What a road was that by way of Lermos which led us to the valley of the Inn, and once more among the dark and melan- choly faces of the Austrian Tyrol! It circles round the rugged mass of the Zugspitz, the highest peak of the Bavarian Alps (over 9,000 feet high), to Lermos, where the keen, conical Sonnenspitz, and the grim, limestone precipices of the Wetterstein, range themselves beside it. That evening at Lermos distant thunder rumbled all round the basin of these great moun- tains, as we sat among the new-mown hay, admiring the exquisite brilliancy of the wild roses on the hill-side beneath us, and the glorious colours which the veins of porphyry and of some other almost orange stratum in the mighty Zugspitz, assumed in the light of the rich sunset. Indeed, the huge mountain seemed to be inlaid with crimson and gold. The shadows cast by the clouds upon its side were so soft and so blue that they looked far more like fragrant exhalations, more like what the Germans call " Waldes-duft," than mere shadows ; and as the cattle with their tinkling bells wound slowly down the opposite heights in a long, thin line, reluctant to go home, though the sun had disappeared for some time and even the rich after-glow was fading, we said to each other, in following their example with equal reluctance, that form, colour, sound, and fragrance had rarely ever before con- spired to produce in our minds so deep an enchantment. As I write, I can still hear the rumbling thunder, smell the rich crops of new-mown hay and the sweet and brilliant wild roses which made the bushes burn with a hundred flames, and see that rich green basin surrounded by mountains so grand and stately in their

forms, that the gorgeous belts of colour which were spread across them did not make them look the leas like "the strong foundations of the earth,"—as the prophet (without much regard, I suppose, to cosmogony) so finely calls them.

The next day we drove over the fine little pass through the Wetterstein mountains to Nalereit, with the white and green lakes so common to mountain passes,—the white lake glacier-fed, the green a spring-water lake,—and the road on both sides glowing with the Alpen-rose, the little rhododendron of the Alps, in its fullest beauty"; and at Imst, in the valley of the Ion, took leave of our good-natured, self-satisfied, zither-thumbing driver and his little dog, Minnie, whom I, rendered regardful in the matter by my own doggies at home, had persuaded to sit between us, instead of running under a blazing sun, which I am convinced would have given her a sunstroke. Indeed, I tried to persuade him

that dogs have sunstrokes, but either my German or my

eloquence failed me. She sat between us accordingly with great majesty, and as our driver went off on his return journey

from Imst, I saw with satisfaction that Minnie occupied my empty seat at his side. From Imst we plunged into the Oetzthal,—a cul-de-sac, opening out of the valley of the Inn, from which I heard with panic that we could only emerge into the valley of the Adige by passing over a glacier pass (the Hoehjoch) which it would take two hours to traverse, so that I used to waken at night in little spasms of uneasiness, and whimper a little privately to myself before going to sleep again. We entered the Oetzthal in a mule carriage, with a young, rash, and rather showy driver, who drove us as far as Lengenfeld. He used to make his mules rattle down hills so steep that I had to clutch the carriage for fear of an overset, and also was obliged so to manoeuvre my feet that my poor toes might not be dashed and wrecked against the side of the carriage, as they sometimes were. We saw the great waterfall at Umhausen under a scorching sun, which made me a little indifferent to the exquisite curve of its leaping waters, and the lovely rainbow which spanned its second descent. Then we drove up by the most raging of all raging glacier torrents, the ferocious Fischbach, which for many miles boils down the valley, tearing and leaping against every rock and bridge as if it were frantic for destruction, and in point of fact injuring bridges almost daily, and sweeping to their deaths every spring and summer many of the Tyrolese workmen who repair them. The guides always beg you to start early in the morning in this valley, for as the noon comes on, the glacier streams begin to swell, and go on swelling till near midnight, often injuring the bridges and rendering them impassable. At Lengenfeld the bridge had been recently injured, and we had to leave our mule carriage on the other side, the grave Tyrolese workmen transportingjour little belongings to the inn. Near Solden, further up the valley, a bridge was totally destroyed, and we had to climb over the shoulder of the mountain,—a glorious walk,—with our " bearer,"—a spare-looking old man, who trans. ported all our luggage, near a:hundredweight and a half, on his single back; and yet though thus handicapped, he climbed the steep mountain-side a great deal faster than we. It was on this journey that we found the great turn-cap lily and the lovely little Linn,ma Borealis growing wild in some profusion. From Siilden we got a mule for our baggage, and continued our way on foot into this grand and often gloomy valley, the glaciers growing nearer, and the thickets of Alpen-rose richer, and the soil less fruitful at every step. Beyond Siilden there were no inns of the ordinary sort. At Heiligkreuz and at Fend, the Catholic priest allows his housekeeper to entertain strangers, charging them some very moderate price for the expense and trouble, while he himself cordially welcomes them to this hospitable "inn of the Curd," as it is called, anxiously inquiring about the state of the bridges down below, and grateful for any gossip even from heretic countries. These priests are generally splendid moun- taineers, though not always very fond of the mountains. The kind cure of Heiligkreuz told Henry he yearned for a flat country. For eleven years he had lived in one where the only flat piece of ground was his own churchyard. However, he had been recently appointed to a cure in the neighbourhood of Imst in the Inn-thal, where, at least, a few square miles of tolerably level country can be obtained by keeping to the line of the river Inn. And so at length, I on mule-back, and Henry walking, we arrived at the close of our cul-de-sac, Fend, of which I can give you no better description than an attempt at translation from the somewhat rough and metaphysical student-poet Hiiusan, who gives, however, a fair conception of Fend, with an extract from which I will close my letter :—

"Beyond the church and village bright

The Thaleit rears its awful height,

Tow'ring far back into the light Or clouded air; The Similaun's smooth dome of snows, Whence the great stream of glacier flows,

Eastwards a brooding pallor [bleichen Lichtdunst] throws, A frigid glare [kalten

Far in the north the snowy line Of Stubay peaks and glaciers shine, While shades of distance strong or fine Draw out the view; And near me on the pine-clad fells The ice-fed torrent roars and swells As noon replenishes the wells Which night withdrew."

—rugged translation and rugged verse, but like the place.—I am,

Sir, &c., AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN DIFFICULTIES.