tions by a high dyke. It is an exceedingly cheap place of residence, and the society very agreeable, a pleasure enhanced by its being the residence now of the Ducal court. It was one time strongly fortified, but now, fortunately for its future progress, is utterly defenceless; its fortifications having been turned into gardens and walks. The modern town consists of 11 parallel streets, intersected at right angles by 10 other streets, which makes the town appear monotonous in its rectangular regularity. The street leading from the palace to the Suspension bridge over the Neckar, divides the town into two parts. The streets are not named, but distinguished by a figure and a letter. The squares are ornamented with fountains, which want only water, which is very scarce here, to make them useful. The principal curiosity of the place is the

Palace, a colossal structure, built of red sandstone, but without any architectural beauty, and only remarkable for its size. It was erected in 1720, by the Elector Palatine, Karl Philip, on the occasion of the removal of his court from Heidelberg to Mannheim. The right wing, used as a theatre, suffered severely from the Austrians in 1795, when they bombarded the city. It has since been repaired. In that bombardment half the palace was burnt, and only fourteen houses remained uninjured. The Austrians threw, on that occasion, into the town, 26,000 cannon balls and 1,780 bombs; it was garrisoned by 4,700 French, who finally surrendered to General Würmser. One wing of the palace serves as a Museum, in which is a Gallery of Paintings, containing many excellent productions of the Dutch School; a collection of plaster casts, and a Cabinet of Natural History, together with a considerable library. In 1779, the flower of all the collection at Mannheim was transferred to Munich. Near the palace is the

burg, on the Parade Platz. Opposite the grand entrance to the Theatre is Kotzebue's house, in which the insane student, Sand, assassinated the owner. The victim and assassin are buried in the churchyard, outside the Lutheran Church.

The Harmony, is a social union, which arose from the amalgamation of the Museum and Casino. This society has a pretty good library, and freely admits strangers. The book and picture shop of Artarid and Fontaine is one of the best in Germany. English Church Service on Sundays.

Schwetzingen (Stat.) A pleasant excursion can be made from Mannheim, to this spot, now accessible by rail, nine miles. It is rather a small town, with 3,000 inhabitants. Here the Garden is the most remarkable object. It covers a plain of 184 acres, and its vegetation is most luxuriant, though situated on a sandy plain.

The most interesting parts of the Garden are the Linden walk, and the groups of trees in the English garden; the prospect at the large Basin, through the opening in the forest, near Ketsh, extending to the Vosges mountains; the Temple of Apollo, which has a peculiar charm when illuminated by the setting sun; the Temple of Minerva, the charming bathing house, the splendid landscape round the Temple of Mercury and the Mosque, with its minarets, all presenting the appearance of a beautiful diorama. The Tower should be ascended and a splendid view will be obtained. Your inspec tion is further invited by the landscape near the birds' basin; the Botanical garden, which contains 24,000 foreign trees and shrubs, among which is an excellent collection of Alpine plants. The gardens are laid out in the French style, and are peopled with statues, bounded by thorn hedges, and intersected by long avenues. The orangery and conservatories should be visited.

The Château is scarcely worth notice. It was originally a hunting lodge, and is sometimes visited by the Grand Duke. The grounds about are kept in good order. In remote days it was the seat of the Electors Palatine, and in 1743 became the summer residence of the Elector Charles Theodore, who expended vast sums of money in changing a flat sandy plain into an ornamental garden, to enjoy the distinct prospect of a pic

Conveyances: Railway to Heidelberg, 15 English miles. Trains in one hour to Frankfort and Carlsruhe, to Baden, Kehl for Strassburg; Freiburg and Baden to Kaiserslautern, Homburg, and Bexbach; Metz and Paris.

Steamboats several times a day to Mayence and Coblenz; and to Strassburg daily.

The traveller would do well to visit Spires from Ludwigshafen, as there is no inducement for the traveller by land to follow the Rhine above Mannheim. The tourist going south had better go along the Baden railway to Heidelberg.

From Ludwigshafen to Spires per railway. Quitting this station we see in the distance the castle of Heidelberg on the side of the Kaiserstuhl. Passing Mutterstadt (Station) we reach Schifferstadt, where the branch railway to Spires diverges from the line, running near to Neustadt, &c. Quitting Schifferstadt by this branch we arrive in a short time at

SPEYER (Station), or Spire, or Spires Inn : Wittelsbacher Hof; Rheinisc' er Hof.

A direct line to Heidelberg, via Schwetzingen (page 141), was opened in 1874.

An old and venerable city, at one time one of the capitals of Germany, situated on the Spirebach on the left bank of the Rhine. It has now a population of 13,700 inhabitants, at one period it amounted to 27,000. It is the seat of the president of the Regency, and of all the supreme boards of administration of the Bavarian Pfals or Palatinate of the Rhine. It may now, however, be said that its glory has departed, and at the present day we recognise it only as the shadow of its former self. It was called by the Romans, Civitas Nemetum, and was, we are told by Tacitus, a strong and powerful outpost on the Rhine, used for the purpose of resisting the attacks of the Alemanni, by whom it was repeatedly destroyed, and again rebuilt by the Emperors Constantine and Julianus. It was also the seat of the Germanic diet, and chosen place of residence of the Emperor Charlemagne and his successors, of the Swabian and Franconian lines, and had conferred upon it all the privileges of a free city of the Empire, whereby it became the seat of a flourishing trade, and the emporium of great wealth. Its citizens had conferred on them by Henry V., in 1111, a

monopoly of the trade of the Rhine, and had a right to destroy any feudal fortress within three German miles of the gates. During the middle ages imperial fétes, court magnificence, and citizen violence within and without were alternately the scenes enacted in this city. Frequently engaged in quarrels and feuds with their Emperors and Bishops, the people were as skilled in the use of arms as mechanics are of the instruments of their trade. Armies, oftentimes of 20,000 men, raised by the feudal barons, whose rapacity and pillage were punished by the burning of their castles to the ground, besieged the city of Spires, but were as often repulsed by the citizens, who, when not victorious, had to suffer much misery and spoliation of property from the inroads of these plundering armies.

The city also maintained in the fourteenth century an army of knights and soldiers for its defence and war purposes, and only settled into quiet in 1530, when an Imperial writ abolished the right of war, and restored peace to Germany. Spires was for more than two centuries the seat of the Reichs-Kammergericht or Imperial Chamber, by which legislative enactments were enforced, and their violations punished. After the devastations committed by the hordes of Louis XIV., it was removed to the Wetzlar, in 1689.

Its prosperity began to wane in the seventeenth century, but did not go down altogether until the War of Succession, during which the greatest atrocities were perpetrated by the French, who took the town in 1689, and issued one of the most barbarous proclamations on record, whereby the citizens, with their families were ordered to emigrate within six days to Alsace, Lorraine, or Burgundy, and prohibiting them under pain of death from crossing the Rhine. At the day named in the proclamation the wretched inhabitants were driven from the city at the beat of drum, and were followed by the French soldiery, who had plundered the houses and churches of everything valuable. The town was left to the sole occupation and mercy of the executioners, who, headed by the Provost-marshal, entered the town with a gallows on the day the proclamation was issued, carrying about with them the emblems of their profession,

By orders of the French general, Montclair, the town was set fire to, and in a few hours, Spires, with its forty-seven streets, churches, houses, and edifices sent forth one unbroken blaze, that illumined the distant horizon, and furiously penetrated into the most cherished recesses of that city, now abandoned to the destroying element. Nor did the work end here, for after a conflagration of three days and three nights, it was found that monuments, fountains, and many houses were still not altogether destroyed; therefore mines were sprung, and these classic monuments of antiquity were rudely blown to atoms. The venerated shrine of religion, beneath whose vaulted pavement were mouldering in clay, the dissolved ashes of royal personages and imperial governors, and within whose shrines were reposing the venerated reliques consecrated by superstitious piety as things holy and mystical, was dismantled, its sanctuary violated, the portal of its tabernacle broken into fragments, and the graves and tombs beneath its roof torn open, and their contents, the bones of emperors and heroes scattered to the winds. Years rolled by and Spires still lay in ruins, but even the rubbish of its once proud monuments spoke eloquently, and from the depths of their desolation issued a voice, appealing to the citizen love and patriotism of her exiled children or their descendants, who once sat beneath the shadow of her wings. They returned to the home of their earlier days or maturer years; each fragment of the ruined city had an attraction for their enthusiasm; the foundations of their homes were sought out, and in time Spires again existed, but only as the shadow of its former self. Cycles of years have gone by, and during their transit, provinces have been raised to empires, and empires reduced to provinces, but Spires has not raised its head.

But even the skeleton of this once great town was not yet exempt from the sanguinary horrors of war, for in 1794, the revolutionary army under Custine took it, and repeated all the atrocity of 1689. In 1816 Spires was ceded to the King of Bavaria In the interval up to this time, much has been done to repair the injuries inflicted on it by war.

The Cathedral was founded in 1027, by Conrad the Salic, as a burying-place for himself and his successors. After his death, his son Henry III.

diligently continued the building, and on his death, in 1056, bequeathed to his son and successor, Henry IV., the completion of this splendid edifice, which was finished in 1097. Its site had been previously occupied by a Roman temple of Venus, and afterwards by a Christian temple, erected by Dagobert II. A fire in 1450 completely destroyed in a few hours the work which it took three generations to perfect; and we see in the present structure, not the original edifice of 1027, but the one erected after 1450, in which the peaked steeples, the eastern cupola, and the round tower are the only remains of the ancient cathedral.

This noble edifice again suffered from the French in 1609, who, though they had promised to respect it, and thereby caused the citizens to fill it with all their valuables, yet plundered it and burned all that was consumable in the west end cupola, nave, and choir. These Gallic barbarians also mined and endeavoured to blow it up, but were unsuccessful in all their efforts to accomplish their purpose. The last prince bishop of Bruchsal and Spires caused this cathedral to be restored in 1772, but gave it, facing the town, a front of pyra mids, entirely foreign to its general style of architecture. During the revolutionary war in 1794, the interior decorations, sculpture, carving, &c., were destroyed by the French; but it was afterwards repaired, and was re-opened for public worship in 1824; since which many decorations have been added, and the west front rebuilt.

Its restored Byzantine interior is modelled in what architects call the "severe style," and is remarkably devoid of ornament, but the height and width of the nave are awful to contemplate. Between the nave and the choir is the imperial vault, in which were buried eight emperors of Germany, whose remains were scattered by the French. The principal Monument worth notice is that of Adolphus of Nassau, by Ohmacht, consisting of a Byzantine sarcophagus, on which is a kneeling figure of the emperor in armour. monument was erected by the duke of Nassau; and there is another to the memory of Rudolph of Hapsburg, by king Louis of Bavaria, executed by Schwanthaler. The other objects of attraction are Schraudolf's frescoes, the best modern works in Germany; the crypt, in which are seen the original

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