CHAPTER VII.
CHOPIN JOURNEYS TO VIENNA BY WAY OF CRACOW AND OJCOW .-- STAYS THERE FOR SOME WEEKS, PLAYING TWICE IN PUBLIC .-- RETURNS TO WARSAW BY WAY OF PRAGUE, DRESDEN, AND BRESLAU.
IT was about the middle of July, 1829, that Chopin, accompanied by his friends Celinski, Hube, and Francis Maciejowski, set out on his journey to Vienna.

They made a week's halt at the ancient capital of the Polish Republic, the many-towered Cracow, which rises picturesquely in a landscape of great loveliness.

There they explored the town and its neighbourhood, both of which are rich in secular and ecclesiastical buildings, venerable by age and historical associations, not a few of them remarkable also as fine specimens of architecture.

Although we have no detailed account of Chopin's proceedings, we may be sure that our patriotic friend did not neglect to look for and contemplate the vestiges of his nation's past power and greatness: the noble royal palace, degraded, alas, into barracks for the Austrian soldiery; the grand, impressive cathedral, in which the tombs of the kings present an epitome of Polish history; the town-hall, a building of the 14th century; the turreted St.Florian's gate; and the monumental hillock, erected on the mountain Bronislawa in memory of Kosciuszko by the hands of his grateful countrymen, of which a Frenchman said:--"Void une eloquence touts nouvelle: un peuple qui ne peut s'exprimer par la parole ou par les livres, et qui parle par des montagnes." On a Sunday afternoon, probably on the 24th of July, the friends left Cracow, and in a rustic vehicle drove briskly to Ojcow.

They were going to put up not in the place itself, but at a house much patronised by tourists, lying some miles distant from it and the highway.