THE following letters, written during a second excursion, are added, on account of their affinity to some of the preceding. SECOND VISIT TO ITALY. LETTER I. First day of Summer. - A dismal Plain. - Gloomy entrance to Cologne.Labyrinth of hideous edifices.-Hotel of Der Heilige Geist. Cologne, 28th May, 1782. THIS is the first day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are on the wing, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the morass which lay before us. After much difficulty we gained an avenue, and in an hour's time discovered something like a gateway, shaded by crooked elms and crowned by a cluster of turrets. Here we paused and knocked; no one answered. We repeated our knocks; the gate returned a hollow sound; the horses coughed, their riders blew their horns. At length the bars fell, and we entered - by what means I am ignorant, for no human being appeared. A labyrinth of narrow winding streets, dark as the vaults of a cathedral, opened to our view. We kept wandering along, at least twenty minutes, between lofty mansions with grated windows and strange galleries projecting one over another, from which depended innumerable uncouth figures and crosses, in ironwork, swinging to and fro with the wind. At the end of this gloomy maze we found a long street, not fifteen feet wide, I am certain; the houses still loftier than those just mentioned, the windows thicker barred, and the gibbets (for I know not what else to call them) more frequent. Here and there we saw lights glimmering in the highest stories, and arches on the right and left, which seemed to lead into retired courts and deeper darkness. Along one of these recesses we were jumbled, over such pavement as I hope you may never tread upon; and, after parading round it, went out at the same arch through which we had entered. This procession seemed at first very mystical, but it was too soon accounted for by our postilions, who confessed they had lost their way. A council was held amongst them in form, and then we struck into another labyrinth of hideous edifices, habitations I will not venture to call them, as not a creature stirred; though the rumbling of our carriages was echoed by all the vaults and arches. Towards midnight we rested a few minutes, and a head poking out of a casement directed us to the hotel of Der Heilige Geist, where an apartment, thirty feet square, was prepared for our reception. LETTER II. Enter the Tyrol.-Picturesque scenery.-Village of Nasseriet. -World of boughs.-Forest huts.-Floral abundance. Inspruck, June 4, 1782. No sooner had we passed Fuessen than we entered the Tyrol, a country of picturesque wonders. Those lofty peaks, those steeps of wood I delight in, lay before us. Innumerable clear springs gushed out on every side, overhung by luxuriant shrubs in blossom. The day was mild, though overcast, and a soft blue vapour rested upon the hills, above which rise mountains that bear plains of snow into the clouds. At night we lay at Nasseriet, a village buried amongst savage promontories. The next morning we advanced, in bright sunshine, into smooth lawns on the slopes of mountains, scattered over with larches, whose delicate foliage formed a light green veil to the azure sky. Flights of |