The country through which my road lay had a more agreeable and softer character, especially at Stehlen on the Ruhr, a place made for a man who wishes to retire from the tumult of the world to cheerful seclusion. I could not gaze my fill on the fresh succulent vegetation, the magnificent oak and beech woods which crowned the hills on the right and left, sometimes growing down to the very road, sometimes going off into the distance; everywhere skirting the most fruitful fields, shaded with red and brown where they had been newly ploughed, clothed in deep or tender green where they were covered by the young winter crops or the fresh clover. Every village is surrounded by a belt of beautiful trees, and nothing can exceed the luxuriance of the meadows through which the Ruhr winds in fantastic meanderings. Towards evening, as I was comparing this smiling landscape with our gloomy pine forests, a tongue of homelike land suddenly appeared as if by enchantment, with its sand, shingle, and arid stunted birch-trees, stretching across the road as far as the eye could reach. In ten minutes the green meadows and proud beeches greeted us again. What revolution was it that threw this tract of sand here? A few miles from Wesel, however, the whole country becomes 'tout de bon' fatherlandish, and, as the 'chaussée' ends here, one wades once more through Berlin loose sand. I arrived unfortunately a day too late to sail from hence by the steamboat, otherwise I might have reached London from Weimar in four days and a half. Now I must travel by land to Rotterdam, and there wait the departure of the first vessel. _Rotterdam, Sept. 25th._ My journey from Wesel to Arnheim was tedious enough. The horses toiled slowly on, through a dull country, amid endless sands. There was nothing interesting to be seen but the great brick-kilns by the roadside, which I looked at attentively on account of their superiority to ours. The more agreeable, and really magical in its effect, is the contrast of the extensive garden which lies between Arnheim and Rotterdam. On a 'chaussée' constructed of clinkers, (very hard-baked tiles,) and covered with a surface of fine sand--a road which nothing can excel, and which never takes the slightest trace of a rut--the carriage rolled on with that soft unvarying murmur of the wheels so inviting to the play of the fancy.