If the stranger suffer himself, by his hunger after fresh air, to be led away, in the days of a strong winter, to the hills above Heidelberg, how monotonous and wild appears to him there nature in her funeral robes. The mountains, the valleys, all wrapt in that white winding sheet, are silent. From a distance only comes a heavy sound, as the ice-covering of the Neckar is heaved and rifted by the combating flood that rushes beneath it. That feeling of solitude seizes him, and he follows the course of a small stream which will, however, conduct him again to the banks of the Neckar. The water, whose course he has followed, has wonderfully wrought the leaves and the grass into fantastical ice-forms; while, above him, hang from the rocks enormous icicles, glittering in the wintry light like crystal daggers. Again he finds himself by the mirror-like surface of the wintry flood, and behold! the uniformity of nature has only enabled man to multiply his pleasures. A glad multitude here is full of life and activity. With delight the eye follows the skilful skater, as he now, with wonderful rapidity flies right forward, now winds in graceful sweeps and circles through the human mass. He moves so freely and easily, that his art would appear quite destitute of art, did we not see the learner in his first attempts tumbling at every trial, till exhausted, he stands and watches, with envious eye, the evolutions of the practised student. The ice-field becomes every moment fuller and fuller, till the strongly congealed surface can scarcely support the hundreds which crowd upon it. And there comes a troop of blooming ladies, hastening down the steep bank of the Neckar. They descend the narrow path, slippery with frozen snow, cautiously, and a troop of their worshippers fly to receive them, place them triumphantly in the chair-sledges, and pushing them before them, vie with each other in sending them, with flying speed, over the crystal ice-plain far away.