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flects on its green surface the Capuchin convent and church of Bornhofen; whilst the castles of Liebenstein and Sternberg, seated in fraternal* propinquity, on the double summit of a towering mount, whose barren crags claim divided empire with verdant terraces, present themselves to the traveller's eye in an almost united mass of picturesque demolition. Their broken parapets glowing with sun-tinctured hues, and their loop-holed towers disclosing in many a thorough light the purest tints of azure, formed the captivating finish to a choice and smiling district of these fertile shores.

Salzig, with its cherry orchards and pretty church; the small hamlet of Weiler, embosomed on the woody eminence above it; and a receding line of mountains exuberantly sylvan, are enchanting objects on the left bank. It is thus, as Mr. Coleridge expresses it,

We see the living landscapes of the Rhine;
Reach after reach salute us and depart;
Slow sink the towers-and up again they start.
But who shall count the towers, as they rise
O'er the dark steeps, or on the horizontal line
Striding, with shattered crests, the eye athwart.

The scene is always changing-ever offering itself in some new point of view. Such a succession indeed of beautiful and sublime pictures, it is scarcely possible to imagine embraced in so limited a compass as that between St. Goar and Boppart, which last mentioned town is well situated on the left bank, and with its numerous spires and cupolas looks very consequential at a distance.

• These ruins are generally called Die Brüder (the Brothers)

On a closer approach, Boppart appears to be in a state of great dilapidation; but its extensive frontage along the margin of the Rhine displays several venerable reliques of its dignity as an ancient imperial city. The convents of St. Martin and of Marienburg are fine objects. The great church displays the circular stile, with arcades of similar construction to those of the Cathedral at Mentz. The two western towers exhibit the singular feature of a great balk of (most probably) timber running across horizontally from one to the other, at the setting on of the spires by which each is surmounted; an expedient doubtless resorted to not for ornament but security. Opposite Boppart is the village of Kamp, a Romau station.

We had not seen many boats on this grand river. Two water diligences, as the yachts are called on the French side of the Rhine, were all we met. Our passage vessel was about 60 feet long, but the cabin occupied the whole space from the poop to the forecastle; and on the top chief of the passengers were seated, for standing impeded the progress of the vessel. The ladies on board and myself were the only persons, unprovided with a bag of tobacco and a long pipe. The young men will smoke you nine pipes full in less than seven hours. In the upward voyage, all large boats are towed by horses, aud make very slow progress. A little below Boppart at the point where the Rhine beneath tremendous cliffs makes the most remarkable bend perhaps in its whole extent, I saw three horses, which were pulling a full-sized boat along the left bank, all of a sudden drawn by the force of the current from off the narrow unprotected

Boppart is generally considered one of the fifty forts established by Drusus. The Frankish Kings had also a palatial residence there.-Schreiber.

road into the water, and drowned.-It is difficult to estimate the breadth of the stream with any degree of precision; but it is always superb in that respect; and except when it forms the wide basins alluded to, extremely rapid. The navigation is impracticable except for those who are well acquainted with its shoals and currents.

In so serpentine a direction do opponent mountains compel the Rhine in this part to flow, that we seemed to be retrograding, as we passed the village of Osterspey, seated on a lovely shelving border of rich meadows and orchards on the right bank, above which appears a large mansion called Liebeneck. It is not (like so many other buildings) a ruin, but in a very respectable and even handsome condition, standing prettily on the top of a lofty ridge, of rounded shape, well wooded and in productive tillage. Another bold sweep to the left brought us to a long and very wide reach, where the mountains, on that side retiring, give liberty once more to the generous spirit of the mighty stream, whose tide gratefully laves the smooth shores of Niederspey and an adjacent village almost in a straight line as far as Rense, carrying us past a fine level profusely planted with fruit trees and the vine.-The proud steeps on the right bank still crowd themselves upon the water's edge. There, on a high rock of pyramidical form, stands the state prison called Marksburg, garrisoned by a company of invalids; and the little antiquated town of Braubach is seated close at the foot of the same barren and isolated crag, from which this decayed but still habitable fortress looks down on the little chapel of St. Martin, and on a prospect of wide-spread magnificence, itself overtopped by regions that form a background of mingled wildness and cul

tivation. In the mountain-locked distance of this glorious landscape appear the towers of Oberlahnstein, a gothic city in miniature, to which place the road along the river side from Braubach is a continued grove of thickly planted walnut trees.

The course of the river is as picturesque as can well be imagined. Sometimes the sudden and abrupt turning; then a long and noble reach stretching away till it loses itself round some of the hills in the furthest distance, reflecting before it gets there the spires of four or five towns, or pretty villages that might pass for towns, and the ruins of as many castles perched half way up the sides of the mountains; then perhaps you will have the stream, its impetuosity apparently forgotten, expanding into a wide and placid lake, with two or three green islands rising from its bosom; the mountains on each side by a sort of natural analogy for awhile less steep; then again a narrower bed, and the current becoming as rapid as ever, encountering occasionally a sandbank or a ledge of rocks, round which

"The river nobly foams and flows
"The charm of this enchanted ground,
"And all its thousand turns disclose

"Some fresher beauty varying round.

The moment of our passing Braubach was highly favourable to the effect of a coup d'œil, which impresses itself with peculiar solemnity on the mind. The sun, though already sunk behind the bold but more distant chain on the left hand, had not yet wholly relinquished its influence over the sky; and changeful splendours were reflected in the waves that whirl their thousand eddies

It was a scene of natural

through a valley replete equally with the bounties and the beauties of creation. grandeur, adorned by the presence and the industry of a numerous population, and heightened by the venerable remains of past ages-a scene such as I shall not forget whilst "the pleasures of memory" are permitted to be

mine.

As we drew near our destined place of repose, the refulgent lamp of night was shining splendidly enough to give almost any scenery the attractions of romantic beauty. How then can I describe the calm yet solemn change which it wrought on the rocks, ruins, and waters of the country of the Rhine! On one side, the "fainter day" distributed itself over a woody steep on which stands the castle of Stolzenfels, marking out as with a magical pencil of light the irregular contour of that venerable citadel-by age more venerable. On the other side, its borrowed lustre shot athwart the verdant meadows and bowery groves of Niederlahnstein: a silver radiance tipped each spiry portion of architectural work raised by the pride or piety of other times, and every prominence of that luxuriant vegetation which, from a most fertile tract by the river's brink, ascends the cliffs in terraces of vines, and clothes with dense forests the mountainous ridges above them.

At length, on the right hand Ehrenbreitstein appears in commanding elevation, casting the shade of her “broad stone of honour" across the glittering bosom of the stream. On the left, a strong, noble, ancient city dis plays its fortified heights, its stately white palace, and its lofty pointed steeples. We pass through a grand bridge of boats, and land on the quay of Coblentz.

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