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DOMESTIC MANNERS OE THE TRUSSIANS.

being beautifully varied and broken, and the Ornaments halfhidden by the boughs of the parasitic plants hanging fromthe pediment. The arch itself is set almost in a bower offoliage, and tlie rieh red of the embossed stone-work is inexquisite contrast, not only with the dark beetle-green ofthe ivy that droops in festoons about it, but with the softercolours of the now autmnn-tinted trees Surround ing it.

This arch is interesting to our countrymen, not alönefor its intrinsic beauty, but from its having been built for thePrincess Elizabeth Stuart (the grandmother of our George I.)by her husband, the Elector Frederick V., to celobrate bisnuptials with the daughter of James I. the English king.It then led to the flower-garden wliich the Prince-Electorhad laid out for her, and which to this day still remainsone cf the loveliest walks in the world; commanding, as itdoes, a vast view of the exquisite scenery of the Neckar,with the Schwarz-Wald lying far behind, and the Oden-Wald towering high in front; and looking deep down intothe little town at its feet, with the pigmy people dotting itspublic places and its streets, and the cradle-like craft driftingdown the stream, whose course the eye can track twistingthrough its mountain Channel far away to where the hazyline of the Vosges looms like a long cloud upon the horizon.

But the arch of triumph, and the flower-garden, and thenew nuptial palace, that were all devised in exultation atthe good fortune that awaited the botrothed prince, nowremain only splendid examples of the vanity of human hopes;serving but to recall to the mind, with all the vividness ofdramatic force, the words of this arrogant Princess, who, whenher husband hesitated to aeeept the crown of Bohemia, de-clared that she would rather eat dry bread at a king's tablethan feast at the board of a Prince-Elector; and who, witha fine retributive destiny, came in the course of years, not