long cascade of steps, while all around the mountains lift their majestic peaks in the solitude of the wilderness which surrounds this paradise.

Nearly twenty miles away, where the great Bavarian plain swells suddenly up into the outlying crags of the Tirol, stands Neuschwanstein, the most imposing and perfect creation of the King. It was in the precincts of this romantic castle, then lately completed, that he was finally arrested. The anguish of his brief captivity must have been largely augmented by memories of this pearl among

royal castles, which, from its situation, its medieval and imposing architecture, and its furniture, stands almost peerless in Europe. Whereas in the other palaces built by the King everything is French, and with all its impressive magnificence, French, of a decadent style, we find in Neuschwanstein an old German castle from turret to foundation - stone. The King, when planning it, was largely influenced by the magic power of Wagner's operas-at first by the Meistersinger, and later by the Nibelungen Trilogy. He was haunted by memories of Nurem

chamber are majestic, and the ornamentation of the walls as the eye climbs from one row of columns upward to another, with all the spaces luminous with arabesque, fret-work, and color, suggests that in such a hall must the Porphyrogeniti of Constantinople have received barbarian embassies from France and Germany a thousand years ago. It is a splendid room, inharmonious only with the power and position of a small King and kingdom.

To the other chamber, the "hall of the minstrels," no such objection could be urged. It is, indeed, hard to do descriptive justice to it. The ornamental art of our century in Germany touches its high-water mark here. The hall must be about one hundred feet in length by seventy-five in breadth, a magnificent system of screen-work reducing this and forming a corridor opening into the hall hardly inferior to the room itself. The roof is probably forty feet high. The windows are of exquisitely stained glass.

The

wall-paintings portray the life of Parsifal, and the color scheme is red, green, and gold. The higher pictures tell the story of the Holy Grail. A more fairy like hall, delicate and ethereal in every impression conveyed, cannot be imagined. And yet every inch of it has been finished with a taste as artistic, and a scrupulous nicety of care as anxious, as if it were a King's signet-ring that was being chased. Never in days of old did singer chant his lay in such a hall as this.

The point I would impress, however, upon any one who reads this description is that, when all is said. the fact remains that nature has done more for Neuschwanstein than art. With all the glories of the castle, it is the situation of it which most impresses. As the traveller stands in the loggia with its gilded roof, near the King's bedroom, and looks up the wild ravine to whose outmost crag the castle clings, and from which it soars, he cannot but feel how idly man toils after the perfection of beauty which nature

lavishes. The never-fading impression which one carries away of the view from Neuschwanstein owes its distinction to this, that, to a degree greater than one finds elsewhere, it embraces every element which man admires in natural beauty. Before you is the most romantic of gorges, unsurpassed by any in the Alps. Over its face falls an ample, flashing cataract several hundred feet high, with a bridge like a spider's web arching it at half its height. All about you are sublime mountain ranges, hoary with the snows of three-quarters of the year. Yet turn your face, and there before you, again, stretches out the vast Bavarian plain, green with its lush growth of verdure, as finely cultivated as a garden. Yonder is an old walled town on a hill with a large château above. Beneath it foams the arrowy flight of a sparkling river. Do you ask for calmer waters to complete the picture? Then watch the sunlight on that little lake half hidden by a mountain spur, and coroneted by encircling cliffs. Or, here on

a lesser hill below you is the beautiful old yellow Castle of Hohenschwangau, famous in mediæval history, climbing out of a sea of foliage, where King Louis spent his boyhood. About its knees huddle the trim houses and gardens of a tiny village. In a word, the view embraces, on the one hand, all that man can do to conquer and embellish nature; and then, as one turns away, he finds himself, on the other hand, face to face with all that nature can do to uplift and thrill the heart of man. It is all a perfect reproduction of the poet's perfect picture: The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

In passing from Linderhof and Neuschwanstein to Chiemsee, the last and most ambitious of the Bavarian palaces, one has to cross half Bavaria. The lake, which gives its name to the Schloss,"

lies about half-way between Munich and Salzburg, and is about ten miles in length by seven in breadth. On a large and pleasant island, reached by a small steamer, the palace fronts the Tirolese peaks, here many miles distant. The surrounding country is a fruitful smiling plain, lacking in interest, although somewhat redeemed by

The lingering mountain-line, far seen.

It is difficult to understand why this special site should have been chosen for a vast edifice which aimed to surpass Versailles in the days of the "Grand Monarque." The latter had its raison d'être in the neighborhood of a great capital, and as the centre of the most numerous, brilliant, and powerful court in the world. But, had Chiemsee been completed, it could never have been peopled without half depopulating Munich, while the expense of maintaining it would have strained the resources of a great Power. Fortunately for Bavaria, it never was and never will be completed. At the time of the King's death the outer walls were mostly erected, and some attempt had been made to lay out the gardens. In addition to this, the "grand apartments" in the front of the palace had been completely finished and furnished. It is these latter which attract the travel

ler to-day. They aim at being a reproduction of the corresponding rooms at Versailles, only on a larger and grander scale. Even the pictures, which in the French palace record the victories of Louis XIV. or the favorites of Louis XV., have been copied, their busts imitated, their intertwined initials and armorial bearings interwoven in the tapestries. There one sees the familiar chamber of the King's bodyguard, or the famed "Galerie des Glaces," and the world-renowned hall of the "Eil de Boeuf." The whole forms a depressing testimony of the admiration which one worthless King could feel for another. It is a vast monument to an unworthy monarch, a scandalous age, and an artistic style, which, hopeless of originality, had turned to the glitter of mirrors and the gleam of gilded cornices to conceal its poverty of thought.

But, when this is said, there is still room for artistic tribute to what is, be it said deliberately, the most magnificently furnished palace in the world. It is Versailles, be it repeated, but, so far as finished, it is Versailles in double splendor. Louis XIV. never walked through such gorgeous chambers; Louis XV. was never astonished by such luxurious and inexpressibly rich surroundings. It is the Arabian Nights reproduced; it astounds the gazer, who, however he may