I settled with myself that this was the market-house of the town, and hastened to besiege so desirable a city of refuge. But during my rapid approach, I observed that the external walls of the nameless edifice beneath the arcade were covered, and without a single interstitial interval, by small pictures in oil-colours, equal in size, and equal in demerit, and each and all representing some calamitous crisis of human existence--a fire, a ship-wreck, a boat-wreck, a battle, a leprosy! It occurred to me at the same moment, that this gallery of mortal casualties and afflictions must be a collection of votive offerings, and that the seeming market-house was, probably, a shrine of especial sanctity. And so it was!--the shrine of "The Black Lady of Altenötting." Instigated by somewhat more than a traveller's vague curiosity, I entered the chapel; the brilliancy of which, eternally illuminated by the reflection of a profusion of silver lamps upon the thousand precious objects which decorate the walls, forms a startling contrast with the dim shadows of the external arcade. In most cases, the entrance to a religious edifice impresses the mind with a consciousness of vastness, and a sensation of awe:-- "------the tombs And monumental caves of death look cold, And strike an aching dullness to the breast." But the chapel of the Black Virgin is diminutive as a boudoir, and yet retains the usual character of listening and awful stillness, the ordinary impression of local sanctity. A few peasants were seen kneeling in utter immobility and self-abstraction beneath a lamp, which seemed to issue in a crimson flame from a colossal two-fold silver heart, suspended from the ceiling--their untutored minds were elevated into the belief of a heavenly commune. In a glass case above the altar, is deposited this far-famed effigy of the Holy Galilean virgin--a hideous female negro, carved in wood, and holding an infant Jesus in her arms of the same hue and material; and exhibited in its extremity of ugliness by the reflected glare of the silver and diamonds, and gems of every description, by which she is surrounded. Chests, mimic altars, models of ships, crowns and sceptres, chalices and crosses of gold and silver and enamel, and enriched with Turkish blue and emerald green,