On taking leave of General Swein, I could not help making some “odious comparisons” between him and some other generals, “_melioris notæ_,” in various parts, and at various epochs of this world. HE did not, like too many of his order, lay villages in ashes, and massacre the inhabitants when rushing from the flames—or deliver their wives and daughters to the tender mercies of an enfuriate soldiery—HE did not murder his prisoners in cool blood, by nailing them to trees, as marks for an undisciplined rabble of fanatic banditti to exercise their muskets—HE did not drag citizens of a free state from their homes, and consign them to the mines and wilds of Hyperborean regions—HE did not mock the forms of HEAVENLY justice, and slaughter the victims of his ambition or revenge in the fosse or on the glacis—HE did not turn the fertile district into a frightful desert, as the effectual means of ensuring peace—(“ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem vocant”)—HE did not perform these or any similar exploits, and, _therefore_, he has had no pious advocate to justify his crimes, or impartial historian to record his virtues! Descending by a long and zig-zag road from the Swine-General’s camp, we arrive at HERRENALB, situated in a romantic glen, enclosed by lofty mountains. Here we lunched, and rested our horses, who certainly had better fare than their masters. Black bread, bad butter, hard eggs, and chopped hay for tea, were devoured without grumbling, in consequence of the canine appetite acquired on the alpine heights. On leaving Herrenalb, we pass on our left, one of the most singular and fantastic groups of basaltic rocks which I have anywhere seen. They appear like a gigantic fortress, with buttresses and embrasures. A traveller has remarked of these productions of subterranean fire, that—“on croirait qu’une imagination fantastique a presidé a leur formation.” They probably issued from a deep-seated volcano, in the form of molten lava, at the time when Staffa and the Giant’s Causeway rose from the bowels of the earth, and congealed in pillars on the shores of Antrim and Argyll. “Firm on its rocky base each pillar stands— No chissel’d shaft, no work of mortal hands. Ere man had ceased in savage woods to dwell— Roots for his food, his drink the crystal well; Ere cities grew, or Parian marble shown, Yon columns stood—and stand while they are gone.”