You will wish to hear something of Bregenz, where we are staying at present, and I have little to say beyond its situation in a little bay on the Lake of Constance, begirt with high mountains, amidst which stretches a level flat, traversed by the Rhine. The town itself is scarcely old enough to be picturesque, though from a distance on the lake the effect is very pleasing. A part is built upon a considerable eminence, the ascent to which is by a very steep street, impassable save on foot; at the top of this is an old gateway, the centre of which is ornamented by a grotesque attempt at sculpture, representing a female figure seated on a horse, and, to all seeming, traversing the clouds. The phenomenon is explained by a legend, that tells how a Bregenzer maiden, some three and a half centuries ago, had gone to seek her fortune in Switzerland, and becoming domesticated there in a family, lived for years among the natural enemies of her people. Having learned by an accident one night, that an attack was meditated on her native town, she stole away unperceived, and, taking a horse, swam the current of the Rhine, and reached Bregenz in time to give warning of the threatened assault, and thus rescued her kinsmen and her birthplace from sack and slaughter. This is the act commemorated by the sculpture, and the stormy waves of the river are doubtless typified in what seem to be clouds. There is, however, a far more touching memory of the heroism preserved than this; for each night, as the watchman goes his round of the village, when he comes to announce midnight, he calls aloud the name of her who at the same dead hour, three centuries back, came to wake the sleeping town and tell them of their peril. I do not know of a monument so touching as this! No bust nor statue, no group of marble or bronze, can equal in association the simple memory transmitted from age to age, and preserved ever fresh and green in the hearts of a remote generation. As one thinks of this, the mind at once reverts to the traditions of the early Church, and insensibly one is led to feel the beauty of those transmitted words and acts, which, associated with place, and bound up with customs not yet obsolete, gave such impressive truthfulness to all the story of our faith. At the same time, it is apparent that the current of tradition cannot long run pure. Even now there are those who scoff at the grateful record of the Bregenzer maiden! Where will her memory be five years after the first railroad traverses the valley of the Vorarlberg? The shrill whistle of the "express" is the death-note to all the romance of life!