he given of the same virtue since he grew up, particularly in the numerous benevolent institutions founded by him in his native home!

"These two qualities of heart won for him the affection of all, and to them more particularly may be ascribed that peculiar charm which fascinated all who knew our beloved master, awakening those feelings of love, admiration, and respect which attended him from the cradle to his premature grave."

CHAPTER VI.

1832-1835.

The Rosenau and Reinhardsbrunn.-Excursions in the Thüringerwald. -Confirmation of the Princes.

WHILE the winter months, including perhaps those of early spring and late autumn, were generally spent either at Coburg or Gotha, in the enjoyment of the society and amusements afforded by those cities, the more genial months of the year were passed, for the most part, either at the Rosenau or at Reinhardsbrunn.

The Prince was always a great admirer of fine scenery, and early showed this taste in the excursions for which the residence at either of these places gave so much facility. "Nothing," M. Florschütz says, "could exceed the intense enjoyment with which a fine or commanding view inspired the young Prince;" and the time passed at the Rosenau or at Reinhardsbrunn, delightfully situated as were these summer residences—the one at the southwest, the other at the northeast extremity of that lovely district of wood and hill known as the "Thüringerwald"—-enabled him to gratify this taste to an almost unlimited extent.

As the place of the Prince's birth, and one to which he remained through life passionately attached, though not destined often to revisit it, we must here attempt some description of the Rosenau. Distant about four miles

from Coburg, it is charmingly placed on a knoll that rises abruptly from and terminates to the south, a ridge running out, their last offshoot, from a range of wooded hills which divide the lovely valley of the Itz from the broad and undulating plain through which passes the main road from Coburg to Hildburghausen, Meiningen,

etc.

This ridge is cut a quarter of a mile above the house, and again half a mile higher up, at the little villages of Unter and Ober Wolfsbach, prettily situated on the right or western bank of the Itz, by openings through which country roads ascend to the open country to the west; while from the latter village it runs back in a steep ascent, first to the picturesque ruins of Lauterbourg, and thence to the summit of the Herrn Berg, the last of the range of wooded hills above mentioned.

The eastern side of the ridge falls steeply, covered with wood, to the narrow valley through which serpentines the pretty little stream of the Itz, sometimes, as at the villages above mentioned, drawing close in below the ridge, at others diverging in wide sweeps to the farther side of the valley. To the west the ridge slopes gently, just above the house, to a meadow shut in by thriving plantations, and with a large piece of artificial water in the centre.

The knoll on which the house stands rises, as has been said, abruptly at the southern extremity of this ridge. It falls precipitously on the east side to the Itz, which again draws close in here beneath the house, and by a very steep descent on the other three sides to the plain to the west and south.

The top forms a small plateau, on the southern edge of which stands the house-a solid oblong building of no architectural pretensions, with high gable-ends to the north and south. The entrance is in a round tower on the west side of the house, to which the approach ascends through a thick grove of young spruce firs round the western side of the knoll. A broad winding staircase in the tower leads upward to the principal rooms on the first floor, and downward to the marble hall, or dining-room, to the south, which, from the sudden fall of the ground, stands at a lower level than the rest of the house.

A small terrace-garden at the north end of the house commands a lovely view of the valley of the Itz, beyond which, to the east and north, the country is broken up into a succession of wooded hills and picturesque valleys, with occasional clearings, and smiling, tidy villages, standing in the middle of rich meadows and orchards; the hills gradually rising in height up to the highest points of the Thüringerwald, visible in the far distance.

Below the house the stream winds, fringed with trees, through a bright and cheerful meadow, to the village of Oeslau, half a mile lower down. Here it makes a turn, almost at right angles, to the west, and runs at the foot of a range of hills, thickly wooded, which bound the prospect to the south, and terminate in the commanding eminence on which stands the old Festung overhanging the city of Coburg some three miles lower down.

The marble hall, in which, as has been mentioned, the Prince was christened, opens on a small graveled space to the south of the house, bounded by a neatly-trimmed