Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/248

10, 1860.] building was erected in the fourteenth century, and is attributed to Hauser, the principal architect engaged in the construction of the cathedral of St. Stephen’s in Vienna. The Church of Marie Strassengel was finished in 1355.

After having passed these interesting objects, we issue from the valley, and cross the plain of Gratz, in the centre of which, on the left of the line, rises the town of that name, with its fortress built on a rocky eminence, surrounded by trees and walks, while the town encircles the whole with all its gardens and orchards, and these are again encompassed by the most luxuriant cultivation, which stretches over the plain to the feet of the encircling hills, whose sides are studded with châteaux, and villas, and châlets. Having passed this beautiful town, the hills approach again from either side, leaving a narrow vale, through which run both the river and the railway; and the flying train, surpassing the stream in speed, soon brings us to the more extensive plain which stretches between the western mountains of Upper Styria and those of Gleichenberg Kugelberg, and Stradner-Kogel, the latter 1900 feet high, and in an hour’s run we arrive at Ehrenhausen, with its noble château rising in majestic grandeur above.

The hill upon which the castle stands rises from the right bank of the Mur, which river has its sources in two lakes not far from St. Michael’s, in the west extremity of the Norische Alpen, at the foot of the Rathhausberg, where also commence the Ratische Alpen in their course south-west; after passing Bruck, Gratz, Ehrenhausen, Marburg, it falls into the Drau, some miles below the Natter, and, in its turn, the Drau is swallowed up by the Danube below the town and fortress of Esseg. The castle-hill of Ehrenhausen is covered with fine trees—oak, beech, pine, and elm, and a variety of other kinds, over which the castle commands a magnificent view of the surrounding country, especially across the beautiful and richly-cultivated plain which stretches towards the east, towards the hills of Gleichenberg, where the buildings of the celebrated baths of that name shine like a mass of snow. To the west, north and south, rise in every form, mountains which have all the characteristics of an alpine range. Among these hills the views are of unrivalled beauty; valleys of luxuriant verdure and cultivation, the eminences clothed at their feet, and often half-way up their sides with vineyards and gardens, and studded everywhere with châlets of the most picturesque forms surrounded by forest and fruit-trees, and trellised with vines.

certainly is not pleasant, in biting a thick hunch of bread, to find that you have made a section of a cockroach; nevertheless, however unpleasant, the discovery is instructive. The geologist, from a much meaner fragment of pre-Adamite life, bisected in a railway cutting, will tell you the exact condition under which the globe existed in some very early stage of its formation, and that much-abused cockroach is equally capable of telling a tale respecting one condition under which the bread which formed its matrix was produced. Everybody knows, or should know, at