At the inn, at the mouth of Birkenau Thal, we proposed to take the eilwagen as far as Auerbach, but that not arriving, we availed ourselves of a peasant's light wicker wagon. The owner was a merry fellow, and had a particularly spirited black horse; and taking leave of our friends, after a delightful day, we had a most charming drive to Auerbach, and one equally amusing, from the conversation of our driver. After tea we ascended to Auerbach Castle, which occupies a hill above the town, still far overtopped, however, by the height of Melibocus. The view was glorious. The sunset across the great Rhine plain was magnificent. It diffused over the whole western sky an atmosphere of intense crimson light, with scattered golden clouds, and surrounded by a deep violet splendor. The extremities of the plain, from the eye being dazzled with this central effulgence, lay in a solemn and nearly impenetrable gloom. The castle in ruins, seen by this light, looked peculiarly beautiful and impressive. In the court on the wall was an inscription, purporting that a society in honor of the military career of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, in whose territory and in that of Baden the Odenwald chiefly lies, had here celebrated his birthday in the preceding July. Round the inscription hung oaken garlands, within each of which was written the name and date of the battles in which he had been engaged against the French. An altar of moss and stones stood at a few yards' distance in front of these memorials, at which a peasant living in the tower told us, the field-preacher had delivered an oration on the occasion. In the morning, at five o'clock, we began to ascend the neighboring heights of Melibocus. It took us an hour and a quarter. The guide carried my knapsack; and as we went, men came up through different footpaths in the woods, with hoes on their shoulders. When we arrived on the top, we found others, and among them some women, accompanied by a policeman. They were peasants who had been convicted of cutting wood for fuel in the hills, and were adjudged to pay a penalty, or in default, to work it out in hoeing and clearing the young plantations for a proportionate time--a much wiser way than shutting them up in a prison, where they are of no use either to themselves or the state. The view from the tower, eighty feet in height, over the great Rhine plain, is immense and splendid, including two hundred villages, towns, and cities. The windings of the magnificent Rhine lie mapped out below you, and on its banks are seen, as objects of peculiar interest, the cathedral of Speier, the lofty dome of the Jesuits' church at Mannheim, and the four towers of the noble cathedral of Worms. In the remote distance, as a fitting termination to this noble landscape, are seen the heights of the Donnersberg, the Vosges, and the Schwarzwald.