_Monday, July 31st._--_Hornberg._--After this, over the wide country to _Villengen_, a walled town upon the treeless waste, the way unvaried except by distant views of remnants of the forest, and towns or villages, shelterless, and at long distances from each other. They are very striking objects: they stand upon the waste in disconnection with everything else, and one is at a loss to conceive how any particular town came to be placed in _this_ spot or _that_, nature having framed no allurement of valley shelter among the undulations of the wide expanse. Each town stands upon its site, as if it might have been wheeled thither. There is no sympathy, no bond of connection with surrounding fields, not a fence to be seen, no woods for _shelter_, only the dreary black patches and lines of forest, used probably for fuel, and often far fetched. In short, it is an unnatural-looking region. In comparison with the social intermixture of towns, villages, cottages, fruit-trees, corn and meadow land, which we had so often travelled through, the feeling was something like what one has in looking at a dead yet gaudy picture painted by an untutored artist, who first _makes_ his country, then claps upon it, according to his fancy, such buildings as he thinks will adorn it. _Thursday, August 3rd._--_Zurich._--At a little distance from Zurich we remarked a very fine oak tree. Under its shade stood a little building like an oratory, but as we were not among the Roman Catholics it puzzled us. In front of the tree was an elevated platform, resembling the _Mount_ at Rydal, to be ascended by steps. The postilion told us the building was a Chapel whither condemned criminals retired to pray, and there had their hair cut off; and that the platform was the place of execution.