DEPARTURE FROM STUTTGART. ULM. AUGSBOURG. THE PICTURE GALLERY AT AUGSBOURG.


_Augsbourg, Hôtel des Trois Nègres, Aug. 9, 1818._


MY DEAR FRIEND;


I have indeed been an active, as well as fortunate traveller, since I last
addressed you; and I sit down to compose rather a long despatch, which,
upon the whole, will be probably interesting; and which, moreover, is
penned in one of the noblest hotels in Europe. The more I see of Germany,
the more I like it. Behold me, then in _Bavaria_; within one of its most
beautiful cities, and looking, from my window, upon a street called
_Maximilian Street_--which, for picturesque beauty, is exceeded only by the
High-street at Oxford. A noble fountain of bronze figures in the centre of
it, is sending forth its clear and agitated waters into the air--only to
fall, in pellucid drops, into a basin of capacious dimensions: again to be
carried upwards, and again to descend. 'Tis a magnificent fountain; and I
wish such an one were in the centre of the street above mentioned, or in
that of Waterloo Place. But to proceed with my Journal from Stuttgart.

I left that capital of the kingdom of Würtemberg about five in the
afternoon, accompanied by my excellent friend M. Le Bret, who took a seat
in the carriage as far as the boundaries of the city.[23] His dry drollery,
and frankness of communication, made me regret that he could not accompany
us--at least as far as the first stage _Plochingen_;--especially as the