My young visitor, Melanie, then became the interpreter in a curious conversation with the others, who could speak only German; and I ventured to turn our thoughts on some of the nobler things which ought not to be long absent from the mind--I mean, what is loved, and feared, enjoyed, and derided, as "religion." In my very limited baggage I had brought some selected pieces and Scripture anecdotes and other papers in French and German, and these were used on appropriate occasions, and were always well received, often with exceedingly great interest and sincere gratitude. Some people are shy about giving tracts, or are even afraid of them. But then some people are shy of speaking at all, or even dislike to ride, or skate, or row. One need not laugh at another for this. The practice of carrying a few printed pages to convey in clear language what one cannot accurately speak in a foreign tongue is surely allowable, to say the least. But I invariably find it to be very useful and interesting to myself and to others; and, as it hurts nobody, and has nothing in it of which to be proud or ashamed, and as hundreds of men do it, and as I have done it for years, and will do it again, I am far too old a traveller to be laughed out of it now. The Kloster at Beuron is a favourite place for excursionists from the towns in the neighbourhood, and no doubt some day soon it will be a regular "place to see" for English travellers rowing down the Danube; for it is thus, and only thus, you can approach it with full effect. The moon had come forth as I leaned out of my bedroom window, and it whitened the ample circus of beetling crags, and darkened the trees, while a fainter and redder light glimmered from the monks' chapel, as the low tones of midnight chanting now and then reached the ear. Perhaps it is better to wear a monk's cowl than to wear consistently a layman's common coat in the workday throng of life; and it _may_ be better to fast and chant and kneel at shrines than to be temperate and thankful and prayerful in the busy world. But I doubt.