From this period till our arrival at the Hungarian frontier, we never, for any length of time, lost sight of the Danube. Here and there, indeed, the road struck inwards, so as to carry us away, perhaps, an English mile or more, from its banks; but the river, after it reunites, is so broad, and the country rises over it to such a height, that its noble expanse is seldom concealed from you, and that only for a moment. Moreover, the monuments of other days,--old castles, dilapidated towers, with here and there a rude pillar, or block of granite,--became, at each post which we gained in advance, more and more numerous. Near Schwaechat, for example, about ten English miles out of Vienna, and itself a village of some two thousand inhabitants, stands a stone, which marks the spot where Leopold first greeted the chivalrous Sobiesky,--not with the ardour which might have been expected from one in his situation, but coldly and ceremoniously, as if the king, who came to save, were sufficiently honoured by the notice of the emperor whom he had delivered. Next came we to Fischamend, where the traveller will do well to halt, if it be only that he may delight himself, as we did, with the magnificent scene which wooes his gaze from the summit of the scaur that overhangs the Danube. I do not think that I ever beheld a panorama of the sort which enchanted me more. We were elevated, perhaps, three hundred feet above the bed of the river. Its broad, but not limpid waters, measuring, perhaps, half a mile across, laved the very base of the precipice, and swept along by their current a rude barge or two, the only productions of man's industry and skill that broke in upon their loneliness. Beyond was a wide plain, magnificently wooded, with here and there a village, looking forth from its covering of green boughs; while, up and down, the eye rested, either upon a continuance of the same bold scaur; or, more attractive still, on the advanced guard of those mountains amid which I and my fellow-traveller had resolved to make our way. Then there were tower and castle crowning the far-off rocks; there were rich vineyards, closing in to the very brink on which we stood; and, as if to complete the picture, a herd of dun-coloured cattle, oppressed with the excessive sultriness of the day, descended, through a sort of ravine, in a long line, and stood to cool themselves in the Danube. Altogether it was as fair a landscape as the eye of the painter would desire to behold; and we did not leave it, till a few fruitless efforts had been made to transfer some, at least, of its most attractive features to a blank leaf in my journal book.