Whether as regards health, spirits, or musical taste (the latter palled by inanimate repetitions of inferior works, or disappointed by imperfect versions of master compositions), it is hard to imagine a tonic better than the Leipsic Autumn Fair, as it was to be taken in 1839 and 1840.

From Berlin to Leipsic, the journey before railroads were made was singularly insipid, save for Wüttemberg: from Frankfort, the road, two nights and a day and a half in length, if travelled in the schnell-post, was more engaging.– First comes the fruit district, which is rich and joyous by reason of its plenty. To this succeeds the country in the Kinsig Thal, which, though not particularly beautiful, has a pastoral character of its own. When the Red Land and the Thuringian Wood are entered, there is some fine forest scenery. About Eisenach the road winds among a succession of hills, clothed with trees, which make a brilliant panorama, when they are seen in their autumnal dress. The towns, too, are most of them worth a day's halt: Fulda, for its ecclesiastical remains ; Eisenach, for its clean, picturesque market-place, and its vicinity to the Wartburg–Luther's Patmos, where the stains of ink with which the Reformer assaulted The Devil still blot the wall; Gotha, for its Palace ; Weimar, for the sake of the brilliant court of intellect and genius which once ruled Germany thence.