These are all names which we have learnt to know and love through the “little book” from Carmen Sylva’s “Kingdom.” Huge mountains crowned with verdure stretch into the plain. Their feet are clothed with forests of beech and oak, whilst their heights are covered with fir-trees. From the monastery you attain the deep solitude of a forest which is here as beautiful as a dream. Gigantic old trees rear their branches to heaven. If one falls, oppressed with the weight of years, it is allowed to remain there till, covered with creepers and moss, it completes the woodland scenery, and young trees grow out of the mouldering trunk. Ferns and orchids of endless varieties and unusual height delight the friend of nature. In this magnificent vegetation every foot of land is covered with multitudes of botanic species, one might say the history of the forest. The most beautiful flowers of the Alps, Edelweiss and Almenrausch, are found on the heights of the foremost mountains. Not far from the monastery the Pelesch casts itself down from Bucegi to the valley below in a foaming waterfall, “wildly escaping from its bounds as if it would take the world by storm.” Its seething waves flow down endlessly, and the river winds hither and thither, and has often devastated the country in its course. It is a beautiful and ever varying picture of steep mountains, shady valleys, and running brooks. The white walls of the monastery welcome the wanderer from afar. The one-storied building is of very humble dimensions, and surrounds the square court of the monastery, which is devoid of any ornament, and in the centre of which a church stands. The inhabited part is ornamented with wooden arcades, and old Byzantine paintings still adorn the outside walls. Thirty monks, types of the eastern clergy, here enjoy in peaceful repose the blessings of this pious institution. Half of this humble habitation had been allotted to the Prince. Lightly built additions in fir wood had been made to the principal building in order to make it at all habitable. If the banner of Roumania had not waved over the entrance, and sentries paced up and down the verandahs, one could easier imagine that an artist had made his home here than that this was the residence of a Prince. We can scarcely conceive with what simplicity and content the princely pair here bore the greatest discomfort for many years. The Princess, for instance, heard the ticking of the clock in the neighbouring cell of an old monk in her dressing-room. The monks dined in the refectory; the Prince in a passage which had been arranged as a dining-room. At first provisions arrived from Kronstadt only twice in the week. But no deprivations seemed worth mentioning here, for in Sinaia as in Monrepos was forest air and liberty in which the Princess delighted.