* * * * * We have reached the shores of the interminable ocean. Its wild waves dash fiercely against the rock-ribbed shores, as if impatient for our return. Our goodly ship, staunch and strong, raises and lowers its festooned bow upon the heaving billows of the waters vast, and its pendant is playing in the wind, and its sails from the foreroyal to the mizzenroyal, and up to the very top of the mainroyal are furled to the full, in its hearty welcome to our return. We embark, and-- "On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone. Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon, New shores descried, make every bosom gay," For we are to visit beautiful France, and learned Germany, and busy England, and Italy, of classic fame. Once more we are on the continent. Once more our observations are to be put to the task. Once more we think ourselves some six and eight and ten centuries back in the world's history. Once more the eye is to be made to see what the mind has refused to credit. Dreary and chilling and appalling are the scenes that now break upon our view. Longingly we think of thee, fair Cordova, thou pride of beauteous Andalusia. We think of thy pavements of marble, of thy fountains of jasper, of thy wondrous artistic skill, of thy exquisite gardens, of thy famous poets and musicians, artists and writers, philosophers and scientists, of thy chivalrous knights and enchanting ladies. Longingly we think of thy wondrous beauty, that would, indeed, in our present surroundings, have sounded fabulous had not our own eyes seen it. Had we been suddenly transplanted from the midst of blossoming and ripening summer, joyous because of its balmy breath and the melodious song of its birds, and the fragrant breath of its flowers, and the gladdening sight of its ripening fruit into the midst of the barren winter, where nature is frozen dead, and the storm rides on the gale, and the earth is bare and naked, and the air is cold and dreary, and the sun shines gloomily through the bleak and murky skies, that sudden change could not have been more keenly nor more painfully felt than that which marked the contrast between the southern lands of Spain and the countries of France and Germany and England and Italy, during the same age of the world's history. Scarcely a city anywhere, save those few that had been erected along the Rhine and the Danube by the Romans. Nothing that could, even with the broadest stretch of leniency, be designated as agricultural. Everywhere pathless forests, howling wastes, ill-boding wildernesses, death-exhaling swamps, pestiferous fens. Prussia, and many more of to-day's proudest stars in the galaxy of European provinces, we find still uncivilized, still roaming about in the very costumes of native barbarians, in the spirits--and vampires--and nixes--and gnomes--and kobolds--inhabited pathless forests. Nowhere a street or highway, save those the Romans had built.