With the exception of the damsel, who stood under the vine-hung porch of the post-house at Egeln, to show the splendid flaxen ringlets which were gathered up at the back of her head by a massive silver bodkin,—there was little to be admired for the first six hours after leaving Halberstadt, by the schnellpost which ran between Cologne and Berlin. At Magdeburg, a mid-day halt of three hours gave us time to assist at the opening of a Kirmesse. This would have been gay and pretty, but for a hurricane of wind, which raised clouds of sharp stony dust, to the laceration of the skins and the blinding of the eyes of holiday-keepers. The cathedral, too, was to be seen; one of the finest buildings of its class in North Germany. The front is very complete, and its two graceful lantern-towers, with the noble window between them, have a certain originality in the combination of their Gothic details I had not elsewhere encountered. The building had been recently repaired, so that the alabaster pulpit, by Sebastian Extel, and the tombs of Kaiser Otto, and Editha of England his wife,—a pair of stately sitting figures, —and Peter Visscher's exquisite Apostles in bronze round the monument of Archbishop Ernest, were not dishonoured by being lost amidst the dust and mildew which make so many an ancient building desolate rather than venerable.