SCHWETZINGEN.

An excellent road, sheltered for nine English miles by rows of high poplars, conducted us through richly cultivated plains from Manheim to Schwetzingen, a small village, distinguished by an Electoral chateau and gardens. This was one of the pleasantest rides we had found in Germany, for the road, though it exhibited little of either the wild or picturesque, frequently opened towards the mountains, bright with a variety of colouring, and then again was shrouded among woods and plantations, that bordered the neighbouring fields, and brought faintly to remembrance the style and mingled verdure of our native landscape.

Schwetzingen had been very lately the Austrian head-quarters, for the army of the Upper Rhine, and some soldiers were still stationed near the road to guard an immense magazine of wood; but there were otherwise no military symptoms about the place.

The chateau is an old and inelegant building, not large enough to have been ever used as a formal residence. The present Elector has added to it two wings, each of six hundred feet long, but so low, that the apartments are all on the ground floor. Somewhat of that air of neglect, which can sadden even the most delightful scenes, is visible here; several of the windows are broken, and the theatre, music-room, and ball-room, which have been laid out in one of the wings, are abandoned to dust and lumber.

The gardens, however, are preserved in better order. Before the palace, a long vista of lawn and wood, with numerous and spacious fountains, guarded by statues, display something of the old French manner; other parts shew charming scenery, and deep sylvan recesses, where nature is again at liberty; in a bay formed by the woods is an amphitheatre of fragrant orange trees, placed in front of a light semi-circular green-house, and crowned with lofty groves. Near this delicious spot, extends a bending arcade of lattice-work, interwoven with vines and many beautifully flowering plants; a sort of structure, the filagree lightness of which it is impossible not to admire, against precept, and perhaps, when general effect is considered, against necessary taste. In another part, sheltered by the woods, is an edifice in the style of a Turkish mosque, with its light cloistered courts, slender minarets, and painted entrances, inscribed with Arabic mottos, which by the German translations appear to express the pleasure of friendly conversation and of indolence in summer. The gardens have this result of a judicious arrangement, that they seem to extend much beyond their real limits, which we discovered only by ascending one of the minarets. They are open to the public, during great part of every day, under certain rules for their preservation, of which copies are pasted up in several places.