without the most remote intention of becoming a tenant of the castle, I yielded so far to my host’s solicitation as to walk over and see it. If the building itself was far from faultless it was spacious and convenient, and its position on a low hill in the middle of a lawn finer than anything I can convey, the four sides of the _schloss_ commanding four distinct and perfectly dissimilar views. By the north it looked over a wooded plain, on which stood the Convent of Mehreran, and beyond this, the broad expanse of the Lake of Constance. The south opened on a view towards the Upper Rhine and the valley that led to the Via Mala. On the east you saw the Gebhardsberg and its chapel, and the lovely orchards that bordered Bregenz; while to the west rose the magnificent Lenten and the range of the Swiss Alps--their summits lost in the clouds. I was so enchanted by the glorious panorama around me, and so carried away by the thought of a life of quiet labour and rest in such a spot, that, after hearing a very specious account of the varied economies I should secure by this choice of a residence, and the resources I should have in excursions on all sides, I actually contracted to take the chateau, and became the master of the Bieder Schloss from that day.* * Dr Fitzpatrick, in his ‘Life of Lever,’ furnishes a more prosaic account of the annexing of the Tyrolean castle,--Mr Stephen Pearce being given as the authority for the unromantic statement that the _schloss_ was advertised “to let,” and that while the Levers were sojourning in Carlsruhe negotiations were opened with Baron Pôllnitz, and Mr Pearce was despatched to Bregenz, where he entered into an agreement for a short lease of “the premises.” This, of course, spoils the story which Charles Lever tells; but I have in my possession a letter written by Mr Pearce at Riedenburg on May 26,1846, quoted at p. 210 of vol i., which would seem to bear out the tale told by the author of ‘The Knight of Gwynne’ in 1872.--E. D.