Burgstein; while farther off Gabel, Reichstadt, with a countless number of villages besides, told of the busy hands by which these fair fields were tilled and kept in order. Heartily thanking our poetical friend for the instructions which he had communicated to us, and charmed out of all sense of fatigue for the moment, we continued our march, till the shelter of a vast wood received us, at once shutting out the glories of the panorama beneath, and screening us from the sun's rays, which had for some time back beat with inconvenient violence upon us from above. It was six o'clock when we reached the inn at Hayde, faint, hungry, and foot-sore. Our reception was not very cordial, nor did we this time, I am sorry to say, succeed in perfectly thawing the ice in which the landlady had encased herself; but we took her bad humour patiently, showed her that we were well disposed to be merry, and obtained in five minutes, first a very tolerable apartment, and by-and-by the best room in the house. Perhaps, indeed, it may be as well to state, that our first reception, even in Bohemia, was not always flattering. Yet somehow or another, it invariably came to pass, with the solitary exception of Hayde, where our usual tactics failed us, that before we had been ten minutes under the roof of a Bohemian innkeeper, not only he, but his whole household, were at our devotion. Neither was any marvellous art required to bring this result about. We acted merely as persons of common sense will always act in similar situations. We turned the landlady's ill-humour or stiffness into a joke, spoke bad German, mixed it with French and English, and won her heart by showing that we were neither sensitive nor fastidious. And the landlady's heart being fairly won, all the rest was easy. The husband, as in duty bound, fell into his wife's views, and the servants took their cue from their superiors. In Hayde, however, though we so far gained our end, that a good supper with a comfortable apartment were afforded us, we have no right to boast of our progress in the hostess's affections. She kept cruelly aloof from us during the whole of our sojourn, and made us pay at our departure just twice as much as, for similar fare, we were charged at any other gasthof in Bohemia. CHAPTER II. OUR LANDLADY AND WASHERWOMAN. THE EINSIEDLERSTEIN. ITS DUNGEONS AND HALL. ITS HISTORY. INSCRIPTION OVER THE HERMIT'S GRAVE. LOSE OUR WAY. GUIDED BY A PEASANT. HIS CONVERSATION. MISTAKEN FOR ITALIAN MUSICIANS. GABEL.